Monday, October 24, 2011

Training Day!

Today is your first day behind the fish counter at Whole Foods. The guy training you is named Felix and Felix is sad.

“Last night I got up the nerve to ask my wife to take me back,” Felix says. “She said no, that she’s happy with her new life, living with a new man who doesn’t wear the stink of the sea on him at all times, a stink so deeply penetrating it’s like he’s got guppies swimming through his veins instead of blood. She used to make me hold my arms in a bucket of bleach up to my elbows once a week. I did it. For her I did it, and I still do it in case she ever decides to change her mind and find a place in her heart for me again. That’s why my arm hair’s blonde if you were wondering.”

You were wondering and you’re glad he explained it. However, you’re worried that Felix’s heart isn’t in this and you’re going to start your training off on the wrong foot.

“There’ll be other fish in the sea,” you say, laughing uncomfortably. “Hey how about we start training?”

Felix says, “I can’t train you kid. I can’t induct you into this life. I can’t let another man suffer loveless and alone, nothing to keep him company but the fish scales permanently stuck to the tops of his shoes. Swim, boy.”

Look Felix in the eye and say, “If I can convince your wife to take you back, will you train me?”

Felix will say yes. You’ll spend the next six years of your life trying to convince his wife to take him back but she won’t budge. Eventually, Felix will die of a broken heart, and when his coffin goes in the ground, so will your dream of working a fish counter at Whole Foods. This is how you will learn that just because you have a dream, the universe is under no obligation whatsoever to make sure you see that dream fulfilled.